Let me ask you something. What would you do if Jesus came to your house today? Picture Him walking up your driveway this afternoon, knocking on the door, and saying, "I'm staying with you tonight." Some of us would be stuffing laundry in the dryer and hiding dirty dishes in the oven before we ever got to the door.
Zaccheus did not get any warning. He got up that morning in Jericho with no plans for company, and he sure did not clean the house extra special. He heard Jesus was passing through town and wanted a look at Him, so he did what a short man does in a big crowd. He climbed a tree.
Zaccheus was not planning for Jesus. But Jesus was planning for Zaccheus.
That raises the question we are going to take head-on. We have been working through the doctrines of grace in this series on the things we believe, and we have already looked at total depravity and unconditional election. Here we come to the point where most of our Baptist brethren part ways with us. If Jesus walked into Jericho with Zaccheus already on His mind, who was on His mind when He walked up Calvary? Did He die hoping somebody, anybody, would take Him up on it? Or did He die to actually save a people the Father had given Him?
Jesus did not come to make salvation possible. He came to save, and every one He came for will be saved.
That is what we mean by limited atonement. Some prefer the name particular redemption, and that is fine with me, because the words mean the same thing. When Christ died on the cross, He died as the substitute and surety for a particular people, the ones the Father gave Him, and His blood secured their salvation from start to finish. He did not die to redeem fallen angels, and He did not die to redeem those who die in unbelief and go to hell forever.
So reads the infallible, the inerrant, the all-sufficient Word of the living God.
We will take this text in four movements, and every one of them comes straight out of what we just read. Begin where Luke begins, with a little man up a tree and a Savior who already knew his name.
A Sovereign Appointment
Look at where Jesus is headed. Verse 1 says He "entered Jericho and was passing through." Jericho was the last stop before the long climb up to Jerusalem, and verse 28 tells us that is exactly where He went next: "He was going on ahead, going up to Jerusalem." Within a matter of days He would be hanging on a cross. Jesus is a man on His way to die, and on the way, He stops for one man.
Verse 2 tells us Zaccheus was "a chief tax collector and he was rich." Tax collectors collected for Rome, and whatever they squeezed out of folks above Rome's share went in their own pocket. Zaccheus was the boss of them. His own countrymen saw him as a traitor and a thief, and they were not all wrong.
Verse 3 says he "was trying to see who Jesus was." I think Zaccheus climbed that tree out of plain curiosity. He had heard the stories and wanted to see the man everybody was talking about. He went looking for a man. He came down out of that tree having met his Savior.
Watch verse 5. "When Jesus came to the place." He knew the place. Out of that whole pressing crowd, Jesus stops under one tree, looks up into the branches, and calls a man He had never been introduced to by his first name. "Zaccheus." Nobody had to point him out.
That ought to remind you of something Jesus said about His sheep.
He calls His own sheep by name. Zaccheus was one of His own before he ever knew it.
Back to our text. Jesus says, "today I must stay at your house." That little word "must" is a big word in Luke's Gospel. It is the word of divine necessity, the word for what has to happen because God has purposed it. Luke uses the very same word back in chapter 9:
The same "must" that sent Jesus to the cross sent Him to Zaccheus' house.
Somebody says, "Preacher, that's a stretch. It was just a tree." Is it? Go back to the book of Jonah.
God appointed a fish. God appointed a plant. I believe God appointed a sycamore tree on the road out of Jericho. Long before Zaccheus was born, long before there was a Roman Empire to collect taxes for, God knew that tree would be standing in that spot on that day, and He knew who would climb it. Whoever planted that seed, man or bird, had no clue. God did.
I will go one further. There was another tree God appointed. I do not know where it grew, but I know where it ended up. It was cut down and shaped into a cross, and the Son of God hung on it. God grew the very tree He knew His Son would die on. Nothing about Calvary was an accident, and nothing about who it was for was an accident either.
Back to our text one more time. Verse 6 shows us the result: "he hurried and came down and received Him gladly." Jesus said hurry, and Zaccheus hurried. Jesus said come down, and he came down. The call of Christ did exactly what it said, and Zaccheus was glad to answer it.
If you are saved, your story started long before the day you went looking for God. Some of you have told your testimony a hundred times, and it always starts with "I decided" or "I went forward." Tell what happened to you, by all means, but tell it right. You were up in a tree out of curiosity or plain stubbornness, and Jesus stopped and called your name. Start your testimony there next time and see what it does to your pride.
Some of you are praying for a son or a husband who wants nothing to do with God. Take heart. The God who appointed a fish for Jonah can appoint a tree, or a hospital bed, or a coworker, or a sermon somebody stumbles across on YouTube. He knows where your loved one will be standing, and He knows their name.
Jesus came to Zaccheus on purpose. But what did He bring with Him when He came? Did He bring an offer, or did He bring salvation itself? Verse 9 answers that.
A Salvation That Arrived
The crowd starts grumbling in verse 7: "He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner." They had Zaccheus pegged right. He was a sinner. Where they missed it was in thinking they were not. Every grumbler in that crowd stood within arm's reach of the Son of God and went home with nothing, because they did not think they needed anything.
In verse 8 Zaccheus stops and makes a public declaration. Half of everything he owns goes to the poor, and anybody he has cheated gets paid back four times over. Where did he get four times? Listen to the law of Moses.
Zaccheus holds himself to the law's stiffest penalty for a thief. Nobody made him. Jesus never even mentioned his money. Grace got into that man's heart, and it went straight to his wallet.
Be careful how you read that, though. The money came after the salvation. Zaccheus started giving because Jesus had already come through his front door. That is the order every time: Christ comes first, and the fruit follows.
Look at what Jesus says in verse 9: "Today salvation has come to this house." Has come. Salvation walked through the front door of that house and sat down at the table, and it did it that very day.
Jesus gives the reason: "because he, too, is a son of Abraham." Zaccheus was born a Jew, but his own people had written him off. As far as that crowd was concerned, he had traded his place among God's people for Roman money. Jesus says, not so fast. This man belongs. He is one of the people God made promises to, and God keeps His promises.
That has been the plan from the first page of the New Testament. Listen to what the angel told Joseph before Jesus was ever born.
See two things in that verse. First, "He will save." The angel left no room for maybe. Second, "His people." Jesus came with a people in view, a particular people, His own. Before Mary ever held Him, He already had a people He had come to save, and He was named for the job of saving them.
Let me ask you plainly. Has salvation come to your house? I am not asking whether you have heard about it or grew up around it. Has it arrived?
When it arrived at Zaccheus' house, it showed. Is there anything at your house that shows it? Maybe the Lord has put somebody on your mind that you have wronged. It might be a boss you shorted on your timecard, or a brother you have not spoken to in years. Zaccheus did not wait for a committee meeting. He stood up right there and said, "Lord, I'll make it right." Salvation that arrives always gets around to the wallet and the relationships sooner or later.
Verse 9 tells us that salvation came. Verse 10 tells us why it came: "For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost." That one verse carries the whole doctrine we are looking at, so we are going to take it in two bites. First, what did the Son of Man come to do?
A Ransom That Sets Captives Free
Jesus states His mission in plain words. He came "to seek and to save." Those are purpose words. This is why He came: to save.
Notice the title Jesus uses for Himself, "the Son of Man." He uses that same title in another place, where He tells us exactly how He would save.
Y'all know how it goes when brethren disagree on this doctrine. It turns into a game of volleyball with Bible verses. Somebody serves you First Timothy 2:6, "who gave Himself as a ransom for all." You hit back Mark 10:45, "a ransom for many." Back and forth it goes. Which one is right?
Both of them. The Bible does not contradict itself. When two people disagree over Scripture, both of them might be wrong, but both of them cannot be right, and the Word of God is never the one in error. Most of the time we are arguing over the wrong word. We fight over "many" and "all" and never stop to ask what a ransom is. Settle what a ransom is, and you have settled what Jesus intended to do when He died.
Albert Barnes put it this way:
A ransom is a price paid to set a captive free. Let me make it plain. Suppose a man here in Glynn County got a call one night that his daughter was being held, and the only way to get her back was to pay. He empties his savings and his retirement and pays every dime they ask for. They take the money, and they keep her. Would you say that girl was ransomed? You would say that father was robbed, and his daughter is still a prisoner. A ransom that does not free anybody is not a ransom at all.
John Gill described what Christ did as our ransom:
In their room and stead. In their law-place. Christ stood where His people stood, and He paid what they owed.
A ransom does more than make captives rescuable. It rescues them. Every time.
Beloved, this is where the rubber meets the road. If Jesus paid the ransom for every single person who has ever lived, and there are people in hell right now, then the ransom was paid and the captives are still in chains. Somewhere, somehow, Jesus failed. But my Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, did not fail. Listen to how Hebrews describes what He accomplished:
Having obtained. That is a done deal. He entered the presence of God with His own blood, and eternal redemption was secured.
Where did Jesus get that word "many" in Mark 10:45? He got it from Isaiah 53, the great chapter on the suffering Servant.
Look at what the prophet promises. "The good pleasure of Yahweh will succeed in His hand." "He will see it and be satisfied." There will be no disappointed Savior on the last day. The Servant "will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities," so the ones whose iniquities He bears are the very ones He justifies. He bore "the sin of many." Many, not all.
What do we do with First Timothy 2:6, then? We do what we ought to do with every verse, and that is read it in its context.
Watch how Paul explains his own words. He says pray "for all men," and in the very next breath he tells you what he has in mind: "for kings and all who are in authority." In Paul's day the king was a pagan emperor, and some of those rulers were throwing Christians in prison. You might be tempted to think a man like that was beyond praying for. Paul says pray for every sort of man, the king on his throne as much as the slave in the field. In verse 7 he reminds Timothy that God made him "a teacher of the Gentiles." The "all" of this passage is all kinds of people, kings and commoners, Jews and Gentiles. Christ gave Himself a ransom for all sorts of men without distinction.
That is how the Bible uses the word "all" again and again. Look at Romans 8.
God delivered His Son over "for us all." Who is "us all"? Paul tells you in the very next verse: "God's elect." The "all" Christ died for in Romans 8 is the elect of God, and every one of them will be given "all things" with Him.
Heaven itself sings about it this way:
That is the "all" of First Timothy 2: people purchased out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
John gives us one more word for what Christ did:
Propitiation is the sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God. John's word comes from the same family of words the Greek Old Testament used for the mercy seat, the lid on the ark of the covenant where the high priest sprinkled the blood on the Day of Atonement. Jesus is that sacrifice. He is the propitiation itself, and wrath was actually turned away from everyone He was offered for.
Somebody will turn over a few pages and say, "But Preacher, look at First John 2:2."
That is a fair question, and the same apostle gives us the answer. Listen to what John wrote in his Gospel about the high priest Caiaphas:
Same writer, same way of talking. In his Gospel it is "not for the nation only," and in his letter it is "not for ours only." In both places John is saying the death of Christ reaches past the Jewish people to God's children scattered all over the world. If Christ was the propitiation for every person, then God's wrath has been turned away from every person, and nobody could ever be lost. John did not believe that, and neither do I.
Another brother will say, "Preacher, you're making the blood of Christ small." No sir. Nobody reading this thinks the blood of Christ is weak. It is the blood of the eternal Son of God, and there is no ceiling on what it is worth. What we are asking is whom He meant to save when He shed it, and the Bible's answer is that He meant to save His people, and He saved them.
Think about what this means on a Tuesday night when you cannot sleep. Your conscience starts dragging out the old list. The devil reminds you what you did twenty years ago and what you said last week. What are you going to answer him with? If you are in Christ, you answer with Christ's record. The ransom was paid for you. Eternal redemption was obtained for you. You can rest in the fact that He did all of it.
This also means your salvation does not hang on the thread of your own willpower. If Christ's death only made salvation possible, then the difference between heaven and hell comes down to you. Brethren, I know me. If it is up to me, I am lost. Thank God it was up to Him.
The Son of Man came to save, and a ransom saves. But save whom? Luke tells us in the last two words of verse 10: "the lost." Who are the lost?
A Shepherd Who Finds His Sheep
When Jesus said He came to seek the lost, He was borrowing language from the prophet Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 34, God rebukes the false shepherds of Israel who fed themselves and let the flock scatter, and then He makes a promise.
"I Myself will seek My sheep." "I will search for the lost." Who are the lost in Ezekiel 34? They are God's own sheep that had wandered off. They were His before He went looking for them. That is why He went.
When Jesus stands in Jericho and says the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost, He is claiming to be that Shepherd, the one Ezekiel promised, come in person to find His own. Zaccheus was a lost sheep, but he was a lost sheep. He belonged to the Shepherd before he ever climbed that tree.
Jesus says the same thing in His own words in John 10.
Who does the Good Shepherd lay down His life for? "For the sheep." He said it twice so we would not miss it.
Did you catch that word "must" again in verse 16? "I must bring them also." It is the same word He called up into that tree in Jericho: "today I must stay at your house." The Shepherd has sheep who are not in the fold yet, and He must bring them, and He will.
Later in that same chapter, Jesus says this to the folks who would not believe Him:
Read verse 26 slowly and watch the order. "You do not believe because you are not of My sheep." Being His sheep comes first, and believing comes after. Let me tell you, I have never been anything but one of His sheep. I just did not know it until God showed it to me.
The Bible calls this people by several names, and every one of them is particular. Isaiah called them "the many," and the angel called them "His people." Paul called them "God's elect." When Paul met with the elders of one church, the church at Ephesus, he called them something else.
"The church of God which He purchased with His own blood." He did not die for the building at Ephesus or the pews in it. He bought people, real people those elders knew by name, and He paid for them with His own blood.
Here is why it all hangs together. Listen to Jesus explain His mission one more time.
The Father gives a people to the Son. The Son comes down from heaven to do the Father's will, and that will is that He lose nothing of what the Father gave Him. On the night before He died, Jesus prayed for that same people:
The Father chose them. The Son died for them and prays for them. The Spirit gives them life. That is one God working one plan for His people.
I love my brethren who hold to four of these points and cannot bring themselves to hold the fifth, and you'll not hear me call them names. But I would ask them to think this through. If the Father chose a particular people, and the Spirit raises that particular people from the dead, and the Son went to the cross for everybody in general, then you have got the Persons of the Godhead working toward different ends. Show me anywhere in Scripture where the Son acted contrary to the Father. You will not find it. So to my brethren I would say this as kindly as I know how: be consistent. Either go all the way with the Arminian, or come all the way over with us.
Somebody always asks, "Well, if Christ only died for His sheep, why preach the gospel to everybody?" Because we do not know who the sheep are. God did not put a mark on their foreheads or paint a stripe down their backs. He did not tell me which ones in our church He died for, and He did not tell you which of your neighbors He died for. What He did tell us is this:
He came to save sinners. The crowd in Jericho thought "a man who is a sinner" was the last man Jesus ought to visit. Saul of Tarsus would have been the last man anybody in the Jerusalem church wanted to witness to, because he was dragging Christians off to prison. Yet he was one of the sheep, and he became the greatest missionary the world has ever seen. He never got over it: "among whom I am foremost."
Who needs to hear the gospel? Everybody. We point every last one of them to the cross, and we do it with confidence, because the Shepherd said, "I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice." Do you know how His sheep hear His voice today? They hear it when somebody opens their mouth and tells them what Jesus came to do. If anything, this doctrine ought to open our mouths wider. We cannot talk a goat into being a sheep, and we do not have to. We call, and the sheep hear the Shepherd. The power is in the gospel and the Holy Spirit, and praise God, the results are His.
Who is the Zaccheus in your life? Who is the person you have quietly decided is too far gone? Maybe it is the coworker with the filthy mouth, or the family member everybody else has given up on. Write that name down. You have no way of knowing Christ did not die for them, and you have every reason to tell them He came to save sinners. Pray for them by name, the same way the Shepherd knows His sheep by name.
The Son of Man came to save, and He came for His sheep. The only question left is whether He got the job done. For that, we have to go to one more tree.
It Is Finished
"It is finished." Everything Jesus set out to do on that cross, He did. The ransom was paid and the wrath was turned away, and nothing was left half done for us to finish. Paul put it this way in Second Corinthians 5:21: "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." On that day the Father looked at His Son as if He were me. Now He looks at me as if I were His Son.
When you pay off a house, the bank sends you a letter that says paid in full. They do not send you another bill the next month. If Jesus paid for a man's sins and that man still has to pay for them in hell, then the same debt was paid twice, and God is too just to do that. Every sin Jesus paid for is paid, and every sheep He died for will be home on the last day.
Zaccheus climbed a tree hoping to see a man. He came down having met the Shepherd who had been coming for him all along. A few days later, that Shepherd was lifted up on another tree, and He finished everything He came to do.
Today
Did you notice how many times Jesus said "today" in this passage? "Today I must stay at your house." "Today salvation has come to this house." For Zaccheus, today was the day.
If you are not in Christ, I need you to hear this. That crowd in Jericho stood close enough to touch Jesus, and they went home grumbling. A few verses later, Jesus came over the hill and looked at Jerusalem:
He wept, and He told them judgment was coming "because you did not recognize the time of your visitation" (Luke 19:44). You can sit in a church pew your whole life, close enough to hear every word about Jesus, and still die in your sins. Do not treat the death of Christ like a general account in heaven you can draw on whenever it suits you. Jesus came to save sinners, and He is calling sinners to come down out of whatever tree they are hiding in and come to Him today.
You say, "Preacher, how do I know if He died for me?" Sitting in your tree trying to solve the doctrine of election will not settle it. Coming to Christ will. Listen to His promise again: "the one who comes to Me I will never cast out" (John 6:37). Nobody has ever come to Christ and been turned away at the door because his name was not on the list. Hurry and come down, and receive Him gladly. If you want to talk about it, reach out to us.
Believer, take comfort. If you have come to Christ, it is because the Father gave you to Him: "All that the Father gives Me will come to Me." He called you by name the way He called Zaccheus by name, and the ransom was paid for you by name. The Shepherd who came looking for you has promised, "of all that He has given Me I lose nothing." He went to all that trouble to find you. He will not lose you now.
Church, before we gather again next Lord's Day, I want you to do two things.
First, take that name you wrote down, your Zaccheus. Pray for that person by name every day this week, and ask the Lord for one natural opening before Sunday to tell them what Jesus came to do. You do not have to preach a sermon. Tell them Luke 19:10: "the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost." Let the Shepherd do the calling.
Second, if the Lord has put somebody on your mind that you owe an apology or a debt, take care of it this week. Do not wait for it to feel easy. Salvation came to Zaccheus' house, and Zaccheus made it right that same day.
When you have done those things and you are tempted to look at yourself and wonder whether it is enough, remember where your eyes belong:
He sat down because the work was finished. He came to save, and He saved.